Court Halts GMO Crops in Southeastern Wildlife Preserves

This lat­est rul­ing bars FWS from enter­ing into coop­er­a­tive farm­ing agree­ments for GE crops on the 128 refuges across eight states, includ­ing the 25 refuges cur­rently grow­ing GE crops, with­out the envi­ron­men­tal review required by the National Environmental Policy Act and refuge man­age­ment laws. The require­ment of envi­ron­men­tal reviews will likely pre­vent the plant­ing of crops in 2013 and 2014, and may result in the per­ma­nent end to the prac­tice, as native suc­ces­sional grasses reclaim fal­low refuge tracts.

Federal dis­trict court in the District of Columbia will hear argu­ments on November 5th on addi­tional reme­dies that may be required to mit­i­gate envi­ron­men­tal dam­age on the Southeast refuges from GE crops already planted, includ­ing such mea­sures as a ban on pes­ti­cide spray­ing, enlarged buffers, and steps to pre­vent trans-genetic con­t­a­m­i­na­tion. FWS had unsuc­cess­fully tried to argue the suit was moot because the plant­ing sea­son was over and the agency fore­saw no new ille­gal plantings.

“While we are happy with the result, we are dis­ap­pointed that the gov­ern­ment need­lessly pro­longed this lit­i­ga­tion,” stated PEER Counsel Kathryn Douglass, not­ing that the gov­ern­ment had tac­itly con­ceded the mer­its of the suit in its court fil­ing last spring. “The sim­ple point we are mak­ing in case after case is that genet­i­cally mod­i­fied crops have no legit­i­mate role on a national wildlife refuge.”

In a rul­ing on October 15 this year, the same fed­eral dis­trict judge, James Boasberg, ruled that the FWS Environmental Assessment (EA) for GE plant­ing in the Midwest region was adequate.

The ulti­mate mean­ing of that rul­ing is less clear due to facts that:

• FWS pro­posed GE plant­ing be phased out after five years;
• GE plant­ing is lim­ited to the nar­row pur­pose of tran­si­tion­ing for­mer crop­land pur­chased for refuge addi­tions into suc­ces­sions of nat­ural grasses; and
• The pro­gram­matic nature of the Midwest EA may require a new envi­ron­men­tal review for each refuge con­tem­plat­ing any GE agriculture.

“How GE crops can be judged to carry sig­nif­i­cant envi­ron­men­tal impacts in the Southeast and not in the Midwest is dif­fi­cult to under­stand and accept,” said Paige Tomaselli, staff attor­ney with the Center for Food Safety. “However, short of a much-needed nation­wide set­tle­ment, this is good news in our fight to end the grow­ing of GE crops on our nation’s wildlife refuges.”

While national wildlife refuges have allowed farm­ing for decades, the prac­tice is los­ing sup­port among refuge man­agers, espe­cially since some crops, such as soy­beans and corn, are avail­able mainly in GE strains. Refuge pol­icy states that GE crops should not be used except when essen­tial to accom­plish a refuge purpose—a test that is extremely dif­fi­cult to hon­estly meet. The law­suits stress that the GE crops actu­ally con­flict with the pro­tec­tion of wildlife, the main pur­pose of the refuges. GE crops also require more fre­quent and increased appli­ca­tions of toxic her­bi­cides, which has fos­tered an epi­demic of “super weeds,” as weeds have mutated.

Source: Center for Food Safety release